Used

Used (see in Gallery / Store) | Image by Bruce Harris

A woman tries a blouse on in the Goodwill store.

A sequined circle covering its front rounding

to a sparkling center seeming hand-made

given away by Shelly who grew too big with age

and her mom who made it, who sat at her sewing

table smiling only to herself as the pattern formed

in the sun through her bay window overlooking

the garden her father dug and kept until almost

the day he died, said it wouldn’t

fit her either and go ahead give it away

I can always make another which she didn’t.

Now Shelly wishes she kept the shirt and framed it

and put it in the hall next to the door of her little girl’s

room where she still stays next to the empty room

where her parents laid. She doesn’t sew or garden

but she did move a soft chair next to the

sewing table still in the bay window.

The shirt is flung into a cart with other used

clothes all bought at the register for a song.

The shopper’s closet big as a bedroom

full of clothes never worn

but are in piles waist high and decades-old

like the industrious ant hills not far off in the

desert plain out her window.

She eventually tries the shirt on and it is

a bit scratchy and too small and sits

in the corner catching the light marked

by the price

and the year.